Fortified with iron: It’s not just for breakfast cereal anymore. University of Illinois researchers have demonstrated a simpler method of adding iron to tiny carbon spheres to create catalytic materials that have the potential to remove contaminants from gas or liquid. Civil and environmental engineering professor Mark Rood, graduate student John Atkinson and their team [...]
Microbes could soon be used to convert metallic wastes into high-value catalysts for generating clean energy, say scientists writing in the September issue of Microbiology. Researchers from the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham have discovered the mechanisms that allow the common soil bacterium Desulfovibrio desulfuricans to recover the precious metal palladium from [...]
Don’t pour that dirty fat from the fryer down the sink — it could be used to make the fuel of the future. Hydrogen has been tipped as a cleaner, greener alternative to fossil fuels. But scientists have struggled to find a way to make it that doesn’t consume vast amounts of energy, use up [...]
A new process that simultaneously combines the light and heat of solar radiation to generate electricity could offer more than double the efficiency of existing solar cell technology, say the Stanford engineers who discovered it and proved that it works. The process, called “photon enhanced thermionic emission,” or PETE, could reduce the costs of solar [...]
The process that lights up big-screen plasma TV displays is getting a new life in producing ultra-clean fuels, according to a report presented March 22 at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). It described a small, low-tech, inexpensive device called a GlidArc reactor that uses electrically-charged clouds of gas called “plasmas” [...]
Coal-tar-based sealcoat — the black, shiny substance sprayed or painted on many parking lots, driveways, and playgrounds — has been linked to elevated concentrations of the contaminants polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in house dust. Apartments with adjacent parking lots treated with the coal-tar based sealcoat contained house dust with much higher concentrations of PAHs than [...]
Australia’s own distinctive red soils could play a part in the formation of the stinking swathes of blue-green algae often shovelled off east coast beaches in summer. A QUT team of scientists is taking an in-depth look at how iron, which gives our iron-rich soil its red colour, reaches water to potentially contribute to the [...]
Ethanol — often promoted as a clean-burning, renewable fuel that could help wean the nation from oil — would likely worsen health problems caused by ozone, compared with gasoline, especially in winter, according to a new study led by Stanford researchers. Ozone production from both gasoline and E85, a blend of gasoline and ethanol that [...]
On 12th January 2010 the “Self” living module was presented publicly for the first time at the Swissbau exhibition in Basel. “Self” is a novel, highly innovative module for working and living which is self-sufficient in energy and water consumption. It includes a bedroom, bathroom, toilet and kitchen and is being used as a test [...]
Finding alternative feed sources for chickens, pigs and other farm animals will significantly reduce pressure on the world’s dwindling fisheries while contributing positively to climate change, according to University of British Columbia researchers. “Thirty million tons — or 36 per cent — of the world’s total fisheries catch each year is currently ground up into [...]
